http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Americans are "looking for a president who believes in them,"
Rick Santorum said on the first day of his campaign for the
Republican nomination for president, and he's repeated it many
times since.

Santorum's latter-day surge in the run-up to the Iowa caucus is
both well earned and ironic. He tirelessly labored in all counties
of the state. And despite his rock-ribbed conservatism, which plays
well with similarly minded caucus-goers, he is, in many ways, just
what voters - tea partiers, occupiers of Wall Street, and everyone
in between - seem to uniformly recoil at: a Washington
insider.

He did, after all, serve 16 years in Congress, in both the House
and the Senate. He's worked at a think tank (one of my faves, the
Ethics and Public Policy Center). But in his sweater vests (which
have taken on a Twitter account of their own), he speaks about
policies that empower working families and don't leave the poor out
in the cold, or perpetually dependent on an unsustainable state. He
points to the kind of populist style that resonates with
people.

And while the most radical activists for certain social issues love
to paint him as harsh, there's compassion in his words and views.
As anyone who has ever made the mistake of Googling his name knows,
Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, has been caricatured
as something of a right-wing bogeyman for decades, but his message
is not a harsh one. Take, for instance, his public profession of
faith. "We want leaders who understand that faith is essential to
the sustenance of democracy," he told me earlier this year, "that
faith is an agent for good, that it protects the weak and
defenseless, that it motives people to confront injustice."

Leaders, in other words, who do not force religious charities to
choose between their principles and receiving the government
funding they need to stay in business, leaders who don't compel
taxpayer funding of abortion and leaders who respect the conscience
rights of voters.

New Yorkers gathered at the Church of the Holy Innocents on that
church's namesake feast day to pray for the conversion of the
hearts of political leaders; for young, scared mothers to have the
courage to seek out the necessary help to bring their children into
the world and provide for them; for the healing of those who have
been hurt by abortion; and for the lives of the unborn. This isn't
a militant message, but a loving one, even as its advocates feel
that their mission has become increasingly urgent.

This is in large part the message that Santorum and his family
carry with them. With his eldest daughter taking time off from
college to work on the campaign, and his youngest daughter Bella's
determination to live despite being diagnosed "incompatible with
life" more than three years ago as a constant source of
inspiration, his is a message about happiness, restoration and
healing in our lives and our culture - about the fullness of
freedom and its preservation.

Santorum has a hard-won wisdom that only shows up in the long view.
You can see snatches of it during the Republican primary debates,
when he schools Ron Paul on foreign policy and America's
obligations to its allies and its own self-defense. Santorum
projects a self-confidence that is not paternalistic, but
straightforward and respectful. Even while Santorum is ridiculed by
the left for being a culture warrior, my own Facebook page
experienced some fireworks the other day as he was blasted as a
"pro-life fraud" for some endorsements he's made over the years,
the kind one can agree or disagree with but which also suggest some
appreciation for forming alliances in an imperfect world - in other
words, for governing.

His is the confidence of a man for whom experience has helped
generate optimism, the realistic sort that comes with knowledge of
something greater than oneself and one's campaign, even one's
exceptional nation. As a person who has worked with him puts it:
"He is a man who simply loves his work, without an ounce of
cynicism. And I've never heard him say 'no' to a request, schedule
permitting. If it can be done, he wants to do it."

We are not the ones we have been waiting for. Nor is Santorum.
Which is precisely why he wakes up every day and works, and why
Iowa voters see something of what they'd like to see in Washington
(again) in him.